This Week In Home Entertainment: Anchorman 2, Fargo, 47 Ronin And More

The announcement of an Anchorman sequel was an unexpected one, coming nearly a decade after the original was released and more than two years after a possible sequel was declared dead in the water. With the help of an excellent marketing push, the movie made a healthy amount in theaters, and this week the movie has made its way into homes, courtesy of Paramount Home Media Distribution. If you plan to purchase the film, we suggest the Blu-ray.

Watching a movie on Blu-ray is generally a better experience, but with Anchorman 2, there are a ton of reasons why, outside of viewing clarity, that fans should purchase the Blu-ray, if they have the proper equipment. The first is that Amazon currently has the Blu-ray running at the same cost as the DVD. The second is that the Blu-ray comes with all of the funny extras, including the Unrated Version and the Super-sized R-rated version—the one that was re-released into theaters with 763 new jokes. While the Super-sized R-rated version adds some musical numbers, most of the extra content is ad-libbing. So if that’s your thing, you've got a lot to be excited about. Both the Unrated and Super-Sized versions of the flick feature more profanity, affecting the PG-13 rating.

Anchorman 2 takes us out of the news world of the seventies and into the eighties, where costumes are a little bit different and the format of the newsroom is rapidly changing. Before the gang can tackle a brand new 24-hour format, Ron Burgundy (Zoolander’s Will Ferrell) and his cohorts (Wet Hot American Summer’s Paul Rudd, Saturday Night Live’s David Koechner and Evan Almighty’s Steve Carell) have to get back together. It’s the perfect setup for a sequel and a clever way to re-introduce audiences to the cast without making the newsroom setting feel stale. Unfortunately, the setup is a lot funnier than the execution and a wild second half takes things even further off track.

In short, despite its clever, twisting premise and faithful adherence to the wild and outrageous characters in the original film, Anchorman 2 is a whole lot lighter on the laughs. Still, the movie certainly still has its quotable moments (including a cameo where Tina Fey says "cunt-punt" in the Unrated Version of the flick) and if you liked the film at all in theaters, the two more explicit editions are also worth owning.

Best Special Feature: If there is anything that three versions of a film on one disc should tell you, it’s that director Adam McKay shot a ton of extra footage for the film. Even more footage is available on the disc through extras as varied as gag reels, more than one line-o-rama and extended, deleted and alternate scenes. All of these won’t keep you in stitches, but they are far and away better than most of the bonus features offered on other discs.

The best of these is the two-part Line-O-Rama. Seriously, if you want to appreciate just how hard it is to keep up with Winter Passing’s Ferrell, watch this special. He and to a lesser extent everyone else, fires out five or six different takes of various lines during numerous scenes, all of which bring something unique and delightful to the table. Bonus points to MacGruber’s Kristen Wiig who probably deserves her own spin-off movie of strange word vomits, many of which are seen here.